Performance theory is an interdisciplinary field that examines the ways in which actions, behaviors, and events can be understood as performances. It draws from theater studies, anthropology, linguistics, and cultural studies to analyze a wide range of phenomena, including rituals, social interactions, political protests, and artistic expressions. Performance theory challenges traditional distinctions between art and life, highlighting the performative aspects of everyday existence and the ways in which identities are constructed and negotiated through actions.
Performance Theory (Concept in English Literature/Literary Studies)
Text as Performance: Performance theory encourages the analysis of literary texts not merely as static objects but as scripts for potential or imagined performances. It examines how characters, narrators, and even authors themselves engage in performative acts within the text.
Reader as Performer: Performance theory highlights the active role of the reader in bringing a text to life through interpretation and engagement. Reading becomes a performative act, as the reader embodies the text’s meanings and participates in its unfolding.
Performance and Identity: Performance theory explores how literary characters perform and negotiate their identities through language, actions, and interactions with others. It also examines how authors use performative strategies to construct their own authorial personas.
Performance and Power: Performance theory analyzes the ways in which literary texts can be used to challenge or reinforce existing power structures. It examines how performances within a text can be subversive, transgressive, or affirming of dominant ideologies.
Performance and Gender: Performance theory has been particularly influential in feminist literary studies, where it has been used to analyze the ways in which gender is performed and constructed through language and behavior. It has also been used to examine the performative aspects of sexuality and queer identities in literature.
Performance Theory: Theorists, Works and Arguments
1959: Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Argument: Goffman introduced the concept of dramaturgy, arguing that social life is a series of performances where individuals adopt roles and manage impressions to conform to societal expectations. He explored the frontstage and backstage aspects of social interactions, emphasizing the importance of setting, appearance, and manner in constructing a desired self-presentation.
1973: Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors
Argument: Turner examined the performative aspects of rituals and social dramas, highlighting their role in resolving conflicts, facilitating social change, and reinforcing communal bonds. He explored the concept of liminality, a transitional state where social norms are temporarily suspended, allowing for creative and transformative experiences.
1977: Richard Schechner, Essays on Performance Theory
Argument: Schechner broadened the definition of performance beyond traditional theater, encompassing a wide range of cultural practices, including rituals, everyday behaviors, sports, and political demonstrations. He emphasized the restored behavior aspect of performance, highlighting the repetition, rehearsal, and adaptation involved in these activities.
1988: Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Argument: Butler challenged the notion of gender as a fixed biological category, arguing that it is a performative act that is continuously constructed and reiterated through social norms and behaviors. She explored the subversive potential of gender performativity, suggesting that it can be used to challenge and disrupt traditional gender roles.
1990: Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance
Argument: Phelan examined the unique qualities of performance art, emphasizing its ephemeral and embodied nature. She argued that performance resists documentation and commodification, challenging traditional notions of representation and authorship.
1999: Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire
Argument: Taylor contrasted the archive, which preserves written documents and material artifacts, with the repertoire, which encompasses embodied practices, oral traditions, and performative knowledge. She argued that the repertoire is a crucial aspect of cultural memory and identity, often overlooked in traditional historical narratives.
2003: José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Argument: Muñoz explored the ways in which marginalized groups, particularly queers of color, use performance to challenge dominant cultural narratives and create alternative spaces for self-expression and political resistance. He emphasized the importance of disidentification, a strategy of simultaneously identifying with and critiquing dominant cultural forms.
The play-within-a-play, “The Mousetrap,” is a calculated performance designed to expose Claudius’s guilt, demonstrating the power of actions and language to shape reality.
Embodiment
Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Sethe’s scarred back serves as a physical manifestation of the trauma of slavery, emphasizing the body’s role in carrying and communicating experiences.
The repetitive actions and dialogues of Vladimir and Estragon highlight the cyclical nature of their existence and the importance of rehearsal in shaping performance.
Spectatorship and Participation
Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author
The characters’ direct interaction with the audience blurs the lines between fiction and reality, emphasizing the audience’s active role in co-creating the performance’s meaning.
Transformation
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
Nora’s decision to leave her family is a transformative act that challenges societal norms and demonstrates the potential of performance to catalyze personal and social change.
Theatricality
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest
The characters’ witty dialogues and elaborate deceptions highlight the performative nature of social interactions and the construction of identity through language and behavior.
Performance Theory: How to Use in Literary Critiques
How to Use Performance Theory in Literary Critiques
Description
Analyze the text as a script for performance.
Consider how the text might be performed on stage or in other contexts. Examine the characters’ actions, dialogues, and stage directions as instructions for performance. Explore how different interpretations of these instructions might lead to different performances and meanings.
Examine the performative aspects of language.
Analyze how characters use language to construct and negotiate their identities, relationships, and social positions. Consider how language can be used to perform various acts, such as persuasion, deception, or self-expression.
Investigate the role of the reader as a performer.
Consider how the reader actively participates in the creation of meaning through their interpretation and engagement with the text. Analyze how different readers might “perform” the text differently based on their own experiences and perspectives.
Explore the power dynamics at play within the text.
Examine how characters use performance to assert or resist power. Consider how the text itself might challenge or reinforce dominant ideologies through its representation of performance.
Analyze the construction and performance of gender and other identities.
Investigate how characters perform and negotiate their gender, race, class, sexuality, and other identities through language, behavior, and interactions with others. Consider how the text might challenge or reinforce stereotypes and norms related to identity.
Consider the historical and cultural context of the text’s performance.
Analyze how the text might have been performed or received in different historical and cultural contexts. Consider how the text’s meaning might change depending on the specific context of its performance.
Performance Theory: Criticism Against It
Overemphasis on performativity: Some critics argue that performance theory overemphasizes the constructed nature of identity and social reality, neglecting the role of biological, psychological, and material factors.
Relativism and lack of grounding: Performance theory’s focus on the fluidity and contextuality of meaning can lead to a relativism that undermines the possibility of objective truth or universal values.
Neglect of materiality: Some critics argue that performance theory focuses too heavily on the symbolic and discursive aspects of performance, neglecting the material conditions and consequences of performative acts.
Elitism and inaccessibility: Performance theory’s complex jargon and theoretical frameworks can make it inaccessible to a wider audience, limiting its impact and relevance beyond academic circles.
Limited applicability: Some critics question the applicability of performance theory to all forms of cultural expression and social phenomena, arguing that it is better suited to analyzing theatrical and performative arts.
Lack of empirical evidence: Performance theory often relies on textual analysis and interpretive approaches, with limited empirical evidence to support its claims and generalizations.
Oversimplification of power dynamics: Some critics argue that performance theory’s focus on the subversive potential of performativity can oversimplify complex power dynamics and overlook the ways in which performance can be used to reinforce dominant ideologies.
Performance Theory: Key Terms
Key Term
Definition
Performativity
The concept that language and actions do not merely describe reality, but actively create and shape it.
Embodiment
The idea that knowledge and meaning are not solely cognitive, but are also experienced and expressed through the body.
Restored Behavior
The repetition and rehearsal of actions, gestures, or words that give them meaning and significance.
Dramaturgy
The theory that social life is like a theater, with individuals performing roles and managing impressions to achieve desired outcomes.
